Kotlin, the alternative to Java developed by JetBrains, is now open sourced under the Apache 2 License.

Kotlin was first announced last year by JetBrains, the company best known for its Java IDE IntelliJ IDEA. last year, but has been under development by JetBrains since 2010.

Named after an island near St. Petersburg, Russia, where one of JetBrains' development offices is located, is object-based, statically typed, and compatible with the Java Virtual Machine and other languages that run on it. Kotlin's compiler can output Java byte code and Java can call Kotlin code.

According to the JetBrains' blog the open source agreement, under the Apache 2 License, covers snapshot builds and source code of:

Kompiler - Kotlin compiler

Enhancements to basic Java libraries including utilities for JDK collections

Build tool integrations (Ant and Maven)

IntelliJ IDEA plugin - Kotlin's IDE

The blog says that the company is also

“looking for Kontributors, i.e. Kotlin contributors — brave souls eager to make this world a better place together with us.”

Snapshot builds of Kotlin (which is still under development) can be downloaded from GitHub.

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